Email Migration is a process used to migrate mailbox content from one account to another. An equivalent term is Mailbox Migration, in which case records such as appointments, contacts or tasks may also be migrated.

Scenarios

Mailboxes may be migrated for different reasons . For example, mailboxes may need to be migrated because a company wants to use a new email service provider

Service provider

A service provider is an entity that provides services to other entities. Usually, this refers to a business that provides subscription or web service to other businesses or individuals. Examples of these services include Internet access, Mobile phone operators, and web application hosting...

. Or mailboxes may need to be migrated following a company acquisition

Acquisition

Acquisition may refer to:* Takeover, the acquisition of a company* Mergers and acquisitions, strategy of buying and selling of various companies to quickly grow a company...

 or merger. In most cases, a simple one-time migration approach may be employed. However, more advanced scenarios exist, including:

• Consolidation: email migration is performed to consolidate multiple accounts into one, for example following an employee's departure.
• Backup: email migration is performed to back up or preserve data, for example to ensure legal compliance
  Compliance
  Compliance can mean:*In mechanical science, the inverse of stiffness*Compliance , a patient's adherence to a recommended course of treatment...
  
  .
• Coexistence: email migration is performed for evaluation purposes, for example during a migration pilot.
• Upgrade: email migration is performed to facilitate an upgrade
  Upgrade
  The term upgrade refers to the replacement of a product with a newer version of the same product. It is most often used in computing and consumer electronics, generally meaning a replacement of hardware, software or firmware with a newer or better version, in order to bring the system up to date...
  
  , for example when deploying a new version of an email system.

Procedure

Various technical procedures are normally used to achieve email migration:

• Email forwarding
  Email forwarding
  Email forwarding generically refers to the operation of re-sending an email message delivered to one email address on to a possibly different email address...
  
  : this allows a mailbox to forward received content to a designated email address.
• MX record
  MX record
  A mail exchanger record is a type of resource record in the Domain Name System that specifies a mail server responsible for accepting email messages on behalf of a recipient's domain, and a preference value used to prioritize mail delivery if multiple mail servers are available...
  
   modification: this allows a mail server to process emails on behalf of a designated SMTP domain.
• Content conversion: this allows content to be converted, for example from TNEF to MIME
  MIME
  Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions is an Internet standard that extends the format of email to support:* Text in character sets other than ASCII* Non-text attachments* Message bodies with multiple parts...
  
   format.
• Property mapping: this allows properties to be mapped, for example from Gmail
  Gmail
  Gmail is a free, advertising-supported email service provided by Google. Users may access Gmail as secure webmail, as well via POP3 or IMAP protocols. Gmail was launched as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004 and it became available to the general public on February 7, 2007, though...
  
   to Exchange
  Exchange
  -Finance and Commerce:* Exchange of goods and services, or trade* Exchange between a buyer and seller, a financial transaction* Exchange , where securities are sold and bought-Communications and Technology:...
  
   contacts.

Features

Email migration solutions may implement different features which determines their suitability for different migration scenarios:

• Supported systems: defines the list of source and destination systems supported (ex: IMAP, Gmail
  Gmail
  Gmail is a free, advertising-supported email service provided by Google. Users may access Gmail as secure webmail, as well via POP3 or IMAP protocols. Gmail was launched as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004 and it became available to the general public on February 7, 2007, though...
  
  , Exchange
  Exchange
  -Finance and Commerce:* Exchange of goods and services, or trade* Exchange between a buyer and seller, a financial transaction* Exchange , where securities are sold and bought-Communications and Technology:...
  
  ).
• Administrative logins: allows administrative login to multiple user mailboxes (ex: using OAuth
  OAuth
  OAuth is an open standard for authorization. It allows users to share their private resources stored on one site with another site without having to hand out their credentials, typically username and password.OAuth allows users to hand out tokens instead of credentials to their data hosted by a...
  
  ).
• Multi-pass migrations: allows multiple migration passes without creating duplicates.
• Scalability: allows a large set of mailboxes to be migrated concurrently.
• Monitoring: allows administrators to monitor migration progress and receive alerts.
• Analytics: allows administrators to access statistics
  Statistics
  Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
  
   such as transfer speed, error rate, etc.
• Reliability: allows the migration process to automatically handle or retry errors during migration.
• Filtering: allows migration of specific content (ex: date range) from specific locations (ex: folders).
• Security: allows migrated content to remain secure, for example using SSL encryption.

See also

• Email marketing software
• Email service provider
• E-mail filtering software